A sign of reform? —

Long-time Googler will head Silicon Valley patent office

Michelle Lee has been "in the trenches" fighting patent trolls.

Michelle Lee, a former Google attorney who was one of the first corporate lawyers to speak out about the harmful effects of patent trolls, will be the director of a new 'satellite office' of the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The move was announced Friday afternoon at a conference about software patents, sponsored by Santa Clara University.

Lee is a Silicon Valley native who grew up in Saratoga, California, with a father who worked as an engineer in the semiconductor industry. While studying for a PhD in computer science, she decided to switch routes and study intellectual property law. "It dawned on me that there were some pretty important legal issues that were being decided, that were hugely influenced by new technological innovation," Lee told the San Jose Business Journal earlier this year. She left a partnership at Fenwick & West, a well-known Silicon Valley law firm, to join Google in 2003.

By 2009, Lee was talking publicly and blogging about how so-called "patent trolls" were a growing burden for Google, and the tech sector at large. That same year she authored a blog post saying that patent reform was needed "now more than ever." Of twenty patent lawsuits that had been filed against Google, only two were from companies with any products or services. (Twenty lawsuits seems quaint in today's environment, with Google having fought or settled more than 100 patent cases, mostly filed by trolls.) Lee also noted a "more disturbing" trend: "In many of these cases, the patents being asserted against us are owned by—and in a surprising number of cases, are even 'invented' by—patent lawyers themselves." Lee left Google in June, but didn’t say where she was headed.

Lee declined to talk about her new position with the USPTO, but Caroline Dennison, a legal advisor at the patent office, said her hiring was a sign of the office's dedication to better dialogue with the tech sector. "[Lee] has been in the trenches with the non-practicing entities in litigation," said Dennison. "She gets it, she knows what's going on. And we couldn't be more thrilled to have her. Director [David] Kappos is committed to this industry, and committed to looking for solutions to this problem. We plan on having this to be not just a satellite office, but a platform for outreach."

The Silicon Valley office is one of three satellite offices to be opened, with the other two opening in Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth. USPTO is scouting for office space in all three locations.

The Santa Clara University patent conference has generally been a breeding ground for discussions friendly to defense-oriented thinking, tech companies large and small, and patent reformers. There was applause all around for Michelle Lee, and her hiring is seen as a good sign. Still, she will be a cog in a big bureaucracy, and the idea of reform coming to the USPTO seems far off. The office is funded by patent fees, examiners can spend only a short time analyzing patents, and all the incentives align towards granting more patents.